My Friend

My friend is the best friend anyone could ever hope for – but my friend chose me, and stays with me, and is mine, so others are just unfortunate. They didn't discover my friend before me… Finders keepers, losers weepers…

That's what they always said…out on the playground. I don't like thinking about it. It was my toy. Mine. I- I had only set it down for a minute, and- No. Stop. My friend is so nice. These thoughts never go on for long, not with my friend stepping in to distract me, to show me my other toys, showing how these ones are better, how much more fun they are. And showing me how great our friendship is. My best friend, the best in the world. They're all jealous, the other kids…

I get dressed and go downstairs to eat breakfast. When I sit at the table with a bowl of cereal, my friend always joins me, and I watch all of the things my friend does to entertain me, like stacking up Cheerios into a swaying tower – on the hand, on the forehead, even on the nose. Building a tower that tall on the tip of a nose was quite impressive – so impressive that I forgot to finish my cereal and had to abandon most of it to turn into mush in the bowl when my mother called for me, told me to get my bag, to get in the car, it was time to go, time to go, hurry up, hurry up- hurry up, for god's sake! Get in the goddamn car!

I don't like it when she yells. I don't like it at all. I don't like the feeling it gives me in my stomach, or in my chest. I don't like how it makes me so small – the kids at school already bully me for being so small, I- I don't want her to make me even smaller. The shrinking hurts. It hurts really, really bad…and it makes my eyes wet and my nose runny and I shrink down to being a baby.

I don't want to be a baby.

But my friend is the best friend in the world. My friend can make me grow up, because my friend is the most grown-up kid I've ever known. We both sit in the car and we both look out the same window and imagine if my friend could run along the fences, the long wooden bars, even the planks when they're vertical, standing up. Moving up and down, bobbing, feet tapping on the lids of a line of trashcans and recycling containers, never falling and never making them fall. Perfect.

We peer up, cheeks pressed against the cold window's glass, looking at the black wires that stretch from one wooden pillar to the next, the telephone poles that reach up into the grey and white that hurt my eyes if I focus on them, the overcast clouds that make me squint. Up there, on that wire, still as agile as some super hero with super powers, we imagine my friend running across the wires – a tightrope walker, better than any in the circus. I've never been to the circus, but the ones in the cartoons I watch with my friend on Saturdays, really early in the morning, when it's still dark outside and everyone is still asleep, those circuses always looked so fun, so amazing. But my friend was more amazing, and my friend had been to the circus before, and my friend told me all about circuses – and from what I've heard, the circus performers cannot even begin to compete with my friend. I wish I could travel too. I wish I could go to the circus one day, with lions and pretty ladies standing on white horses with long manes…

We turn into the school parking lot and our imaginations make the turn too and come back into our heads. My friend can no longer be seen running beside the car. It's too crowded, too crowded…I don't like it when it's crowded… Mommy doesn't like it when it's crowded…it makes her yell…which makes me shrink, and I almost turn into a baby before I can escape- before I can get out of the car.

I always try to run with my rolling backpack, but for some reason, even if the ground is perfectly flat, it always tips over, on one side or the other, and makes those skid marks…either black ones on the concrete or white ones, tears, rips, fraying strings, on the sides of my backpack. Mommy doesn't like this either. She yells at me about those marks on my backpack. She says I don't treat it well, that I don't appreciate it, that I don't appreciate anything. I'm a spoiled brat, she says. But my friend knows. My friend knows how much I like my backpack, that I love it and I never want to get different one. My friend helps me color in the white patches with markers during class, quiet and keeping it a secret so that no one will notice, so that the teacher won't stop us, and so that Mommy won't yell.

We try really hard to be secretive, but other kids always see, someone always sees…and that's all that needs to happen before everybody in the entire class has seen it. By recess, everyone in the entire grade has seen me coloring in the white patches on my rolling backpack. I don't like it when everyone is able to see what I do through only one pair of eyes, because those eyes always see something bad about what I'm doing, and then everyone else sees something bad about me coloring my backpack.

I try to stay away from them when they all come together to make fun of me and ask me questions that are wrong, that I can't answer since the answer would be wrong because- because- 'cause it was never true to begin with. I'm not poor so I can't say why I'm poor. I can't say how my dad lost his job, because he hasn't lost his job, and because I don't have any dad at all. I want one though… I want one… Other kids with dads are always having fun…and playing…and smiling…and laughing…a lot.

My friend has a brilliant idea. We go across the playground, go under the bars and towers, the plastic and metal. We go behind the playground, behind and away from everyone else, being sneaky because my friend is good at camouflaging us – we can blend in and move anywhere. We move behind the dumpster and sit down on the dirt. It's mixed with lots of stones, and I clear some away with my feet by pushing the heels of my shoes against the ground. But that only clears the gravel and brings up a really dark brown dirt that's a little damp and would make my pants dirty. It made my shoes dirty, so I clean them with the sides of a little rock that's not big enough to stop the dirt from making my hands brown in places. I fill in the bare patches I had made on the ground and then wipe off the dirt the rocks couldn't scrape from my hands. Then my friend and I throw the dirty rocks at the hill that goes up in front of us – up, up, up, and ends with a black chain-linked fence. It's hard to draw chain-linked fences correctly. I never can…but my friend always does it right. Right now, my friend is trying to teach me. We cleared away some of the gravel and used some of the rocks to practice drawing…

But that made us dirty…and we forgot to go to the bathroom to wash our hands before the bell rang. We had to run to our class's line all covered in the brown dirt…on our hands…on our arms…on our shoes…our pants. I try to brush it off my pants but it only seems to add more, to smear more of it, to make it dirtier. Other kids are talking about how dirty I am. I know it, because they're laughing behind me…somewhere in the line as we all wait for the teacher to come, which is always forever.

But my friend stops me again, distracts me and makes me wonder if maybe they're just talking about something else that's funny. I glance back but see bodies and no faces…smiles and laughter in voices, but there are too many to make out for sure what exactly they're talking about… That's how it always is. That's why I can never tell if they're all laughing at me or not… That's another reason why I don't like it when it's crowded…when there are so many kids and people talking around me. It makes me smaller too…because a lot of voices seem like one loud voice…and I don't like yelling… I don't… I don't…

Class is alright sometimes, but right now I'm dirty and the teacher makes me wash my hands and arms in the sink. There are sparkles in the dirt…really thin specks in the dirt that stick to my skin and seem to become a part of it… So it won't come off…it won't become clean… I scrub with the rough paper towels…the same color as the dirt so I don't know how much I'm taking off…and my skin is getting redder and redder, so it's hard to see if I'm making it any cleaner.

It feels like I'm giving myself rug burns, so I stop, dry off my hands and arms, and then sneakily dry up the sink, because it's covered in water…lots of little pools that make it as messy as I am… There's a little on the floor, but water evaporates, so it'll dry up on its own.

I go back to my desk and my friend and I look at the red marks I had made on my skin. My friend thinks it looks painful. I say I'm not a baby. It doesn't hurt at all.

Someone heard me…they already made someone else hear…someone else heard that I'm weird. Oh… great… Now everyone is going to hear what I said and that I'm weird, and after lunch the entire grade will know. I wish I had a super secretive, quiet whisper like my friend. Then no one would be able to hear me, and I'd be fine – not weird at all.

My mom yelled at me in the car when she picked us up from school. She had seen how dirty I was when I was walking towards the car through the window, so the yelling started as soon as I opened the door…which let the sound out. The sound was then shut up in the car and it got louder… It grew bigger…a lot bigger than me…pushing down on me. All of the yelling crushed me and made me small, and made me a baby because I cried a little when I said I was sorry. I'm not a pig. I was only trying to learn how to draw a chain-linked fence, because I didn't know how to draw one…and at school, that's about the only thing I learned today.

How did I do on my spelling test? I didn't have a spelling test today. Those are at the end of the week. But Mommy says that I had one today, that I'm lying, that I shouldn't talk back. Adults are never wrong and little snots are always wrong. I don't look like a bugger…my friend doesn't think I look like a bugger. My friend knows that there was no test today – though it wouldn't have made a difference if it had been today. I'm stupid…so I can't spell… One time I put down a lot of letters and actually spelled toilet. That was pretty cool. My friend and I had laughed at the test until we turned as red as the pen marks that crossed out all of the numbers.

Toilet… I had told some other kids, but they hadn't been impressed. They had walked away, talking to one another, laughing later, and I never figured out if they had been laughing at me because I had spelled toilet instead of Jurassic, which is what should have been written there.

While Mommy yells, I try to imagine my friend running along the fences and wires, but I can't peer up with my cheek against the glass because Mommy would notice and yell at me for ignoring her. The yelling was so strong it made me nervous…it even made my friend nervous and when I was imagining the super powers…they failed. The voice messed up my friend's balance and my friend toppled a trashcan and hit the asphalt in a driveway and got hurt. I stopped imagining because I didn't want to keep seeing my friend fall and get hurt. I felt that I was being selfish…

At home it was better for a while, my friend and I got to play in the backyard, climbing trees and hiding in bushes, making forts in a secret, magic city. We weren't allowed inside the house. Mommy didn't want us inside. As soon as we'd gotten home she'd gone upstairs and put on the timer for one minute and told us to get out of the house before it went off. I heard it beep like a fire alarm, through the walls and glass doors, but then it had been turned off and we were able to go play and forget about the timer, forget that we weren't allowed inside – because now we wanted to be outside, we preferred to be outside, we chose to be outside. And we played and played until the sky got pink at one end and purple and black at another end…wherever the sky ends…which…I don't think it really does.

What would my step-father do when he got home? Mommy asked, but I didn't give her the answer. He wouldn't do anything…the man with the grown up name…who was not Daddy… He never does anything. He disappears because he goes to work, kinda like how I go to school. And when he's home, he never talks. At least…not to me…not so that I'm supposed to hear him…which doesn't mean I don't hear him.

He's not my dad. I'm not even allowed to pretend that he is, if I had ever wanted to pretend. I'm not allowed to call him Dad or Daddy. I have to call him by his name, a really tall name - like a grownup - that isn't the same as a kid's name, which is Johnny or Billy or Eddy instead of Jonathon, Bill, or Edward. He has the big version of a name, and it makes me feel funny to call him that name, because I'm only used to pronouncing Johnny, Billy, or Eddy. I can't say grownup names very well. The name doesn't come out…not easily. It's too big for me. It jets jammed up in my throat and makes it hard to breathe, makes me choke and fidget and step on my toes and look at the toes I'm stepping on – which makes Mommy yell, which makes me small…

His name makes me small… His deep voice makes me small when I hear him talk to my mom at dinner and say her child should do sports, some activities, stay after school so that my mom doesn't have to take care of the child all day, which tires her out and makes her feel stressed. I'm her child, her only child, so I'm the one who should do sports, who should do activities and not come home until late so my mom isn't unhappy. She's unhappy when I'm here. She's happy when I'm not here… But I'm stuck outside anyways…

My friend makes me look at my plate and see how the food can be rearranged so that it can form a happy face. A happy face…a smile…that makes me happy too.

See. I have the best friend in the whole world.

The voice of my step-father, who isn't my father…just something far away…many steps away, says that my mother's child should make some friends. But I don't need friends. I have the best friend in the entire universe! Why would I need friends that aren't as good as the friend I already have? I try not to say anything. Saying things makes grownups mad because little kids are always wrong – and because of that they're annoying…they're brats and snotty little buggers…

The child they are talking about should make some friends at school and go over to the other kids' houses so the child wouldn't have to be home all the time…in their home all the time… It's not really the child's home…is it?

I want to pretend like I can't tell that they're talking about me, but there is no crowd, and there is no mistaking it. Even my friend knows… My friend is quiet when they talk about me finding new friends, as if the friend I already have isn't good enough.

The child doesn't have any friends. No friends- no friends…

I duck my head and clench my fists in pain for my friend who is listening. I am growing smaller, smaller, almost a baby…almost. I might even disappear entirely this time, and be like I was never born. Then my Mommy wouldn't have to be a mommy, and my step-father wouldn't have to be a step-father…

Being alone is bad.

But I'm not alone! I'm not! I have my best friend in the world with me!

I'm not sure which part I said out loud…but I spoke…I was wrong… I made the adults angry. My step-dad doesn't yell. He would never yell at my mother. And he never talks to me… But Mommy yells…she yells…she yells and yells and yells and the voice gets bigger and louder as she gets bigger and louder and my stomach hurts and my chest hurts, and I'm shrinking, shrinking, shrinking…again. I think I whine like a baby, my head ducked down. I am hurt. I am afraid. I am ashamed.

You have no friends! Your friend does not exist! Your friend is imaginary! Your friend is in your head! That's like a crazy person! You're like a crazy person! Crazy people have people and voices and visions and friends in their heads! Crazy people are bad and weird and wrong and they die! They drive off and kill themselves, just like Daddy did.

I am bad. I am weird. And I am wrong. …Maybe that is what's gonna happen to me next? Maybe I'm gonna die?

But my friend is my best friend! I want to keep my friend! I want to keep my friend! It's not bad! It's not weird! It's not wrong! My friend could never be any of those things! My friend is perfect! The best friend that ever was! The best friend you could ever hope for! The best friend I could ever, ever hope for!

But the yelling made me smaller… I turned into a baby, and my nose ran and I cried tears...tears, tears, tears. Sobs. I became a little snot, a brat, badbadbadbad. Smaller and smaller as she got louder and louder, curling tighter and tighter in my seat, my head ducking down farther and father. Smaller, louder, tighter, farther…shrinking and shrinking, becoming less than a baby…

I disappeared…entirely…

I was gone…completely…

And so was my friend.

My friend was the best friend that had ever existed…and the best that would ever come into being… The best…the best…the only one who could make me grow…who could make me think more optimistically... The only one who could understand me and make me happy.

I wish my mother hadn't killed my friend.

My friend would have told me to step on the breaks…told me to stop…told me not to-

…

…

Daddy.